Georgia must stop “abusing” Saakashvili and return him to Ukraine – Ukraine’s top diplomat

The Georgian authorities deserve a harsh reaction from Ukraine about the condition of Georgia's former president, Mikheil Saakashvili. 

The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Dmytro Kuleba, said the Georgian ambassador is expected to have a challenging conversation with Ukraine's foreign ministry.

Kuleba said that on July 4, in the morning, the diplomat should arrive at the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry.

"A tough conversation will be held with him. He will go to Georgia," the minister stressed.

Kuleba stressed that Georgia should stop abusing Saakashvili and return him to Ukraine, as he is a citizen of Ukraine.

On the air of the national telethon, Dmytro Kuleba added that it was President Volodymyr Zelensky's mandate to summon the Georgian ambassador and offer him to leave Ukraine. Such a move is a severe form of diplomacy.

According to the head of the foreign ministry, after new photos of Saakashvili appeared, "everything reached a boiling point." So Ukraine took a drastic but fair step.

"When the state is dissatisfied with something, the first level of reaction is to express a protest. The second level of reaction is to recall its ambassador for consultations. And the third level of reaction, several orders of magnitude higher in terms of severity, is to ask the ambassador of this country to leave Ukraine for consultations with his government. This is an extremely tough form of diplomacy, but the Georgian government deserves it," the minister emphasized.

On July 3, ex-president of Georgia, former head of Odesa Regional State Administration, and former head of the Executive Committee of the National Reform Council of Ukraine Mikheil Saakashvili appeared in public after a long time, speaking online in the Tbilisi courtroom.

The published footage shows that Saakashvili has lost a lot of weight. He is literally exhausted.

As Rubryka reported, the Ukrainian leader reacted to Saakashvili's exhausted appearance. Zelensky said that Russia, whose de facto imprisons Saakashvili, is slowly but surely killing him.

The President of Georgia, Salome Zurabishvili, believes that Mikheil Saakashvili's detention conditions should be softened by releasing him with an electronic bracelet.

Background

The former president of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili, is in prison in his homeland. Back in 2018, he was sentenced in absentia to three years in jail in the case of exceeding powers during the pardoning of those convicted of murdering businessman Sandro Girgvliani and to six years in prison in the case of the beating in 2005 of Member of Parliament Valery Gelashvili.

Saakashvili is also accused of embezzling budget funds and illegally crossing the state border. After his return in October 2021, the Georgian authorities stated that he and his associates "allegedly planned the murder of oppositionists to provoke riots and blame the authorities." However, there are no proceedings on this fact.

As a sign of protest, Saakashvili began a hunger strike, after which his health deteriorated. Lawyers, relatives, and supporters of Saakashvili emphasize the deterioration of the politician's health and call for him to be sent for treatment abroad.

On February 6, the Tbilisi City Court refused to satisfy the request of Saakashvili's lawyers and did not postpone the execution of the sentence due to the former president's health. The representative of the Penitentiary Service of Georgia, Nika Abramishvili, stated that the report submitted to the court does not contain reliable information about the severity of Saakashvili's illness and cannot be the basis for a postponement.

At the same time, Saakashvili called the court session "a laughingstock" and his sentence "death." In March, the ex-president said he was at risk of multiple organ failure and was "close to death" in the hospital where he was transferred from prison.